1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of computing based systems for sales management and more specifically for managing of sales leads.
2. Related Art
Sales support systems are an important part of many modern businesses. These systems may be configured to assist in many parts of the sales process. For example, sales support systems are available for generating sales leads, managing accounts, tracking contacts, and managing sales leads. Those support systems configured for managing sales leads sometimes include tools for assigning new leads to sales personnel.
Some prior art systems allow a sales manager to assign a sales lead to a particular salesperson based on a characteristic of the sales lead and a predefined assignment rule. The sales lead may be information about a potential customer such as their contact information, purchasing potential, or interests. In a typical instance a predefined assignment rule may specify that all sales leads associated with potential customers in a certain territory be assigned to a specific salesperson.
In operation, sales lead assignment tools are typically configured to receive new sales leads and make assignments based on a single static set of assignment rules. Once an assignment rule is changed, any further assignments immediately reflect the change. Using these systems it is difficult to make substantive changes to sets of assignment rules because all the changes must be completed before any further assignments are made. Otherwise, one or more assignment may be made under a mixed set of rules leading to unpredictable and undesirable results. It is not unusual for administrators of a previously known sales assignment tool to work over a weekend in order to complete a modification of the assignment tool in hopes of completing their work before the tool is again used for making sales lead assignments on a Monday morning.
This prior approach may generate related problems. For example, the assignments made on the Monday morning may include surprises for both the administrators and sales personnel. The distribution of sales leads may be unbalanced, mistakes in assignment rules are only discovered after assignments are made, and sales personnel may be unsatisfied with new assignments, etcetera
These and other disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the invention.